


One and the Same

by YinNocturne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Baby dragons - Freeform, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 02:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16693744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YinNocturne/pseuds/YinNocturne
Summary: Norberta remembers. Harry gets a surprise.





	One and the Same

Even though it’s Hagrid who raised her in the first few weeks, the large fuzzy faced creature who gave food and shelter isn’t the one Norberta remembers most.

It was the pale-faced, slip of a thing who had been there at her hatching. The one whose hand had reached out, not demanding, just resting on the table near her, perfectly still, not a twitch to set off her instincts. This creature, ‘Harry’, as he was called by the Giant Fuzzy visited many times in those first weeks. Popping suddenly into view, preceded by the rustle of the mantle about him that seemed to be completely removable - these creatures truly were strange, to remove their protections so flippantly; how did they keep warm, keep themselves safe if they were forever losing their armour. 

Norberta didn’t understand them at all. But the small body smelt of wind, and fire, so she liked him - and he never restricted her wings, always making sure to keep his limbs away from her back. He even helped to extend one side out fully, when it wouldn’t stretch properly. 

He was there the first time she flew. Really flew, not just gliding on spiraling thermal updrafts - although he was there for that too - flapping furiously, straining against the weight of her body, small though it was. But her wings were yet weak. Finally, after many nights of only being able to hover crudely for a few seconds before collapsing, she managed to make it up to perch on one of the resting places that ‘Harry’ perched on when he came to visit. His delighted sounds, and even more delightful chin scritches made her preen, giving a rippling wiggle that traversed the length her spine. The twitching tip of her tail sank it’s spines into the upright of the resting place. ‘Harry’ vibrated slightly, moving his hand down slowly to carefully tug her tail spines free. She liked this creature, he was always gentle, always patient, content to back off if she snapped at him when his hand got too close, or too sudden a movement caught her off guard.  

He was there, too, when she left. Struggling awkwardly with the crate only until the big stone structure, he opened it up once they were inside and let her clamber up his limbs to perch on his head. It was much nicer up here, a nice nest, even if she was a bit big. Her body settled sprawled over his shoulders, tail swinging carefully away from his back. Without her in it, he set the crate on an angle and dragged it through the stone, up and up and up until they were nearly in the sky. Norberta’s wings twitched involuntarily, but she knew she wasn’t yet capable of sustained flight - and, unfortunately, still unpracticed at landing from even a moderate height. ‘Harry’ set the crate down, still open, and leant against the edge of the stone. From her perch, snout resting comfortably on his head, she soaked in the view of the dark horizon. Of the thousand sparkles above, of the dark green swathe of forest below. The smell of the wind was strong up here, it sent tingles all through her, and she wiggled - just as she had after her first flight. 

There was a vibration beneath her and ‘Harry’ lifted a limb up, to which she happily lifted her snout slightly to accept the chin-scratches it offered. She would miss this creature. Small and pale, but smelling of wind and fire. 

* * *

The Russian wizard who claimed he’d seen the baby dragon they’d been sent to pick up sprawled over the boy’s shoulders was teased about it for months. Dragons were vicious, no matter how young, even the ones raised from hatching by wizards wouldn’t allow them all that close. And, the remote possibility aside, when they’d landed the dragon was safely inside a crate, outfitted with the leather rigging that Charlie had told them he’d sent over the week before.

The kid who was there for the hand off was tiny, Dimitri didn’t want to think how he’d hauled the crate up to the top of the Astronomy Tower. He was quiet, didn’t make a fuss, just laid a hand on the top of the crate and mumbled something under his breath, before stepping back and letting them harness it to their brooms. He stayed long enough to see them safely mounted up and on their way, giving a small wave in response to the farewells of his crewmates. 

Dimitri swiftly forgot about that boy. They had to fly in tight formation, and needed as few delays as possible for this trip. Dragons hated to fly not under their own power, it made them restless. Thankfully this one was still small, so when it started to get twitchy it wouldn’t jar them too badly. 

* * *

Because Charlie hadn’t been there, having ended up in the Preserve’s infirmary just the day before with a rather large burn to his right side, he didn’t connect Harry to Norberta. Didn’t really think of it, until he was helping the rest of the crew off load the dragons and their nests at their temporary camp deep in the Forbidden Forest. The Fireball had been docile, for all a dragon can be docile, creeping out slowly once the crate had been opened but not making much of a fuss. Then they’d all been called over to subdue the Shortsnout who’d decided it wanted to fly around right  _ now _ \- not at all advisable when they were setting up a stone’s throw away from a school full of underage wizards. It took them twenty minutes to subdue and sedate it enough that they could settle both dragon and clutch. The crew split up again for the Welshie and Norberta. 

Charlie had a bit of a thing about Norberta. He’d been the one to  _ find _ her, so he was a bit over-protective, he also knew her better than anyone else on the Romanian Preserve, let alone in this international crew. So when they dropped the front end of the travel crate, and she poked her snout out, only to give a pleased rumble and turn back into the crate he shooed the other handlers off to a safe distance. When she re-appeared a moment later, with the whole nest platform being carefully push-pulled after her by her tail, he remembered. She would know this forest, the smells of it, the ozone tang of magic from the school full of baby wizards and witches to the east, the faint splashing coming from the Black Lake. He laughed, bright and loud. 

“It’s fine, she knows this place.” He called out to the rest of the crew.

“What are you rabbiting on about Charlie?” Carla yelled back, she had her wand out, but pointed carefully away so as not to spook the dragon prematurely.

“She hatched here.” He was grinning madly, “Three years back my little brother sent me an owl, saying that Hagrid had managed to get his hands on a dragon egg. And successfully hatched it, she was already the size of a big kneazle when I sent Dimitri to pick her up.” He grinned down at her from his perch on top of the crate.

“Did the back-to-back international portkeys addle your head, Charlie?” She frowned.

“Nothing that wasn’t already scrambled.” He yelled back, and got a snort in reply. But the rest of the handlers seemed to decide that his apparent lack of sanity meant that he could be the one to settle Norberta. Not that Charlie minded, she was pretty well settled already, having dragged the nest platform over to a dense copse of trees; with quick, powerful flicks of her tail she dug out a small hollow, and pulled down some small saplings to line it. Then she carefully transferred the eggs, breathing a stream of focused dragonfire over them before settling in for a nap. 

* * *

When Harry follows Hagrid out to the dragon pens in the Forbidden Forest, hidden under the Invisibility Cloak and concertedly ignoring the ‘date’ going on beside him, he doesn’t recognise Norberta. But Norberta recognises him. She recognises the smell of wind and fire, the rustling of the mantle she can’t see through. She hears his footsteps and the sounds of his breaths though, so she knows where he is. She listens to him, curled up on her nest, and thinks of her hatching for the first time in years.

Thinks of the pale slip of a thing, a human child, she now knows. Her clutch will hatch soon, a month or so, maybe less. She wants him to be there, like he was for hers. Norberta hopes he will come back, now that he knows where she is. Neither of them know that the next time they meet will be vastly different to what any might expected or, strangely enough, hoped for.

* * *

The morning of the First Task of the Tri-Wizard Tournament dawns bright, clear, and cold. Harry is sitting on the window ledge next to his bed, Hedwig on his shoulder, watching as the sun rises. He slept poorly: after retiring early to get away from the  _ attention _ of the rest of the school, he’d tossed and turned through the night. He’d given up an hour before the sun would rise, pulling on his robes and scarf and curling up in the window, to watch the darkened grounds. Hedwig had flown up barely ten minutes after he’d given up on the hope of any more sleep, tapping determinedly on the window. Once Harry had let her in, she settled on his shoulder and set to work attempting to groom his hair into some semblance of, well some owl standard. The addition of her small weight on his shoulder had, conversely, made it feel like of the weight had lifted off his shoulders. Hedwig wouldn’t blame him for the Tournament, she had kept faith with him, the only one who’d stayed by his side through everything, since he’d arrived in the Wizarding World, newly eleven and completely out of his depth.

Hedwig gives him a fond nip on the ear, and taps at the glass again, when the sun is high enough to be fully past the tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest. He shifts carefully to open the window without prematurely dislodging her, and watches as she flies back to the Owlery to roost for the day. He procrastinates a while longer, watching as the world wakes fully, but eventually he has to face the world: Gryffindor House, his fellow Champions, and the gallery of students, parents, important wizards and witches from all over Europe, Great Britain and surrounds. 

If the general behaviour of the student populace of Hogwarts and the visiting Tri-Wizard school’s was predictable, then the results of the First Tri-Wizard Task was completely out of everyone’s expectations. The first three champions complete their tasks with varying levels of success, their dragon ‘opponents’ perfectly happy to snap and snarl at the intruders encroaching on their nesting area. But, as anything involving Harry Potter is wont to do, the last dragon to be settled into the area was Norberta, and everything started slipping off the rails of conventional expectation like a dragon had melted the supports right out from underneath them with great prejudice and dragonfire. 

_ Norberta was miffed. Did the silly two-leggers really think she wouldn’t notice the fake egg in her nest, really, it wasn’t even that good of a facsimile. But she can smell wind and fire boy, so she goes readily enough, settling protectively over her clutch in the noisy ring. When Harry emerges from one side of the ring she huffs, blowing out a small gout of fire, and ripples her spine.  _

Harry stops and blinks up at the, really very impressively sized dragon he’s supposed to get passed - somehow - and tilts his head. There’s something familiar about her, something he can’t put his finger on. The dragon shifts, twisting it’s long neck around to delicately grasp the Golden Egg between its teeth. Harry, very carefully, stands stock still, as that long neck extends to deposit the Egg at his feet. He blinks, frozen in place as the head of the dragon stays right in front him, at chest height. The dragon wriggles in place again, and then turns its head and sighs, blowing out hot smoky air just far enough away from Harry’s body for it not to burn him to a crisp. Then carefully, oh so carefully, the dragons head shifts forward the last few inches to bump his chest as lightly as a kitten might, the leans back to bare its chin and throat. And there’s something about that action that rattles loose the realisation he couldn’t place before: this dragon might be bigger than the Burrow, but that wiggling ripple is just like Norberta, when Harry would scritch him, well her, under the chin. 

Carefully, Harry lifts a hand up and puts his fingers to warm scales and drags them forward - he’s not sure he has the strength to give proper scritches now Norberta is so big. But it seems to do the trick, because she wiggles happily again, and starts herding him back towards the makeshift nest site on the other side of the area. The false egg left behind in the middle of the arena, Norberta curls up around her eggs, the real ones, and nudges Harry in against her flank, she’s big enough to keep him safe now. Harry doesn’t exactly pay attention to his scores being assigned by the judges, or Bagman’s commentary. The warmth radiating off Norberta is just this side of too hot, and it feels like all all his tense muscles are being melted into satisfied goo. The stress of the year drains out of him, and as Norberta flares out a wing and resettles it so he’s hidden from the outside world, Harry decides a nap is an excellent idea. He can deal with everything else later.

* * *

Honestly. Harry Potter just had to get everything. A dragon, a  _ dragon _ , treating him like-- like some sort of wayward hatchling. It just wasn’t fair.

* * *

Harry stays there, wrapped up with Norberta, in a cocoon of warmth for the next two days. He sleeps through the first eighteen hours, the longest unbroken sleep he’s had in his life, only waking to Hermione’s voice echoing from outside the canopy of Norberta’s wing.

“H-hello, Norberta. Um, I’m just going to leave this here, alright? It’s for Harry, ah, human food. I’d much like him alive, you see, so if you could um…” She trailed off, and there was a small thump and the sound of footsteps. Harry grumbled sleepily, rubbing his eyes with one hand, and petting at Norberta’s flank with the other. There was enough light outside that even filtered through Norberta’s dark wing leather it was bright enough that Harry could see in colour. 

“Mornin’ Norberta,” He trailed off into a jaw cracking yawn. “Breakfast? Hermione, said something about, food.” He slumped against Norberta’s side, he felt like all his whole body was made of molasses. It was hard to concentrate, and when Norberta shifted slightly to poke something into the cave create by her outstretched wing, he cringed from the sudden influx of midday sun. When he was done blinking the spots out of his eyes, there was a cheery looking wicker picnic basket, complete with handle and red gingham lining. Dobby must have been involved, and Harry was sure that there would be enough food in that picnic basket to feed  _ Norberta. _

Feeling much revived after draining several goblets of pumpkin juice, and eating his way through three generous sandwiches, Harry prodded Norberta’s flank. He rather wanted to know what was going on.

* * *

The faint pressure of the small human shifts against her side, and she flexes in response. Her clutch is coming soon, she can feel it. A bushy furred human had come to deliver food to the wind-and-fire boy, he would be safe until her children had hatched. With a slow, smokey sigh Norberta started to prepare for the hatching. 

She shuffled her bulk, carefully - so very carefully, until she was lying on her side, curled around her eggs. She herded ‘Harry’ with wing tip and foreclaw until he was tucked up into the joint of her shoulder, it would protect him from the hatching process without obscuring his view. Adjusting the positioning of her right wing to allow fresh air to swirl around her small human, while still trapping warmth and smoke around her eggs, she settled in to wait. They wouldn’t be long in coming, she rippled in anticipation. Soon, they would be here soon. 

* * *

Harry wasn’t sure what to think, when Norberta started shifting, though he was glad that she seemed to be quite aware of him and his fragile human body. From his new spot, standing on one of her legs and tucked between the other and her shoulder he could see the sky and breathe clear crisp air again, which was rather nice. He could also see her eggs, five of them, on a bed of glowing coals in the curve of her tail. There were quite beautiful, and the sight of them, all five glowing slightly against Norberta’s smooth black scales, was very impressive. It made the memory of Norberta’s hatching - a single egg all alone in a cooking cauldron - feels very sad in comparison.

Watching Norberta’s eggs, waiting for the first hints of the baby dragons inside breaking through, makes Harry feel more alive than he has in a long while. The curling anticipation and excitement feel like flying for the first time. While he may not understand why Norberta chose him, chose to allow him to witness the hatching of her clutch, Harry is so very glad she did. 

* * *

Her hatchlings are almost ready. Norberta can feel their brimming magic, the pulsing vibrations becoming increasingly frenetic as their time to fight their way free of their eggs looms. She chuffs softly, curling tighter around her clutch and her human child. She rests her head near Harry’s body, though it is awkward on her neck, and watches her eggs with him. They are beautiful, dappled black and glowing from the inside.

Crick-crack, the first of her eggs start to rock back and forth, tapping against it’s clutchmates. Soon all five of her soon-to-be-hatchlings are poking and prodding at their shells from the inside, and Norberta wiggles and rumbles a greeting to them. 

The first of her clutch breaks free with a shower of shell fragments and disgruntled shake. The amniotic fluid will soon dry in the heat, but it’s sticky and rather uncomfortable until them. Her first hatchling, shuffles and stamps a few times before turning back to her clutch. Sniffing at the eggs and cheeping encouragingly at unhatched eggs. 

The rest of her clutch hatches quickly, all healthy and nicely coloured, and soon they are cavorting around her legs and daring each other to explore the wind-and-fire boy. Norberta rubs her cheek carefully up against her Harry,  _ they are such good children, aren’t they wind-and-fire boy. _


End file.
